Ted Bundy. I read The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule (who knew and worked with Bundy) and it's a hard case to get out of my head. I was particularly haunted by the the very short opportunity he had to nab a lot of his victims. One girl never walked around her campus after dark; the one day she took a chance, he kidnapped her. One woman went upstairs to grab a magazine, leaving her fiance and his children for a brief moment; he kidnapped her. All of the crimes were horrid, but the one that stands out to me the most is him abducting two women from the same place hours apart (a crowded beach). Most of the women kindly offered him assistance, as he was using a cast as a ruse. It's easy for this case to still haunt, considering that the bodies of many of his victims have never been found, leaving their families to suffer. I suspect that he killed many more women than we actual know about.

Big pod to this. I remember 3 things most about this book.

1. Ann Rule knew him personally and even worked a victim's hotline with him. Alone. At night.

2. One of the few who escaped was a younger girl who was the daughter of a cop. She said something in his eyes told her to get away at any cost.

3. That photo from the trial where his "mask" fell way. If you've read the book, you know the one I'm talking about! The urbane guy disappeared, a monster suddenly popped up and it was captured on film.

Is there a link someplace to the photo you mentioned? I haven't read the book so I'm not familiar with it.

Ted Bundy. I read The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule (who knew and worked with Bundy) and it's a hard case to get out of my head. I was particularly haunted by the the very short opportunity he had to nab a lot of his victims. One girl never walked around her campus after dark; the one day she took a chance, he kidnapped her. One woman went upstairs to grab a magazine, leaving her fiance and his children for a brief moment; he kidnapped her. All of the crimes were horrid, but the one that stands out to me the most is him abducting two women from the same place hours apart (a crowded beach). Most of the women kindly offered him assistance, as he was using a cast as a ruse. It's easy for this case to still haunt, considering that the bodies of many of his victims have never been found, leaving their families to suffer. I suspect that he killed many more women than we actual know about.

Big pod to this. I remember 3 things most about this book.

1. Ann Rule knew him personally and even worked a victim's hotline with him. Alone. At night.

2. One of the few who escaped was a younger girl who was the daughter of a cop. She said something in his eyes told her to get away at any cost.

3. That photo from the trial where his "mask" fell way. If you've read the book, you know the one I'm talking about! The urbane guy disappeared, a monster suddenly popped up and it was captured on film.

Is there a link someplace to the photo you mentioned? I haven't read the book so I'm not familiar with it.

I believe Mikayla means the second photo down in this link:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2013565/Ted-Bundy-Police-serial-killer-suspect-California-murder-spree.html (sorry it's DailyMail,I'm having some trouble on my work computer) The one where he's holding his hand over his head and making a monstrous face.

I believe Mikayla means the second photo down in this link:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2013565/Ted-Bundy-Police-serial-killer-suspect-California-murder-spree.html (sorry it's DailyMail,I'm having some trouble on my work computer) The one where he's holding his hand over his head and making a monstrous face.

@GreenEyedHawk and Jedikaiti - Yep, it's #3 in that montage!

If you ever see the paperback in a store, the photos are in the middle. You see all these dapper shots of a guy you'd want to camp with under the stars (eek!) and then this shot just pops up. I'm almost positive it was taken in a courtroom.

I highly recommend it as a read. One of the most fascinating aspects is the very savvy Ann Rule trying to grapple with the likability of the Bundy she knew vs the beginnings of her fears that he might be this serial killer everyone is talking about. You can't make this stuff up.

I believe Mikayla means the second photo down in this link:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2013565/Ted-Bundy-Police-serial-killer-suspect-California-murder-spree.html (sorry it's DailyMail,I'm having some trouble on my work computer) The one where he's holding his hand over his head and making a monstrous face.

@GreenEyedHawk and Jedikaiti - Yep, it's #3 in that montage!

If you ever see the paperback in a store, the photos are in the middle. You see all these dapper shots of a guy you'd want to camp with under the stars (eek!) and then this shot just pops up. I'm almost positive it was taken in a courtroom.

I highly recommend it as a read. One of the most fascinating aspects is the very savvy Ann Rule trying to grapple with the likability of the Bundy she knew vs the beginnings of her fears that he might be this serial killer everyone is talking about. You can't make this stuff up.

Such a fascinating, frightening book. I remember that Ann found him very charming, and said that she couldn't actually believe that he had done all of those things until she sat in the courtroom in Florida and heard all of the testimony.

If my memory is correct I think that it was on the day he killed two women that one actually got away from him. He used the cast ruse, and asked for the woman's help loading something into or onto his vehicle. She said that when she got near to his vehicle she felt an overwhelming sense of dread, stammered some excuses, and left quickly. After the murders of that day were publicized she was able to give the police a description.

It's interesting how Ted's mask slipped in the courtroom. One woman who managed to escape a serial killer/rapist in Buffalo, NY, described his face of rage when he started to attack. [She escaped when some others came near.]

I believe Mikayla means the second photo down in this link:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2013565/Ted-Bundy-Police-serial-killer-suspect-California-murder-spree.html (sorry it's DailyMail,I'm having some trouble on my work computer) The one where he's holding his hand over his head and making a monstrous face.

@GreenEyedHawk and Jedikaiti - Yep, it's #3 in that montage!

If you ever see the paperback in a store, the photos are in the middle. You see all these dapper shots of a guy you'd want to camp with under the stars (eek!) and then this shot just pops up. I'm almost positive it was taken in a courtroom.

I highly recommend it as a read. One of the most fascinating aspects is the very savvy Ann Rule trying to grapple with the likability of the Bundy she knew vs the beginnings of her fears that he might be this serial killer everyone is talking about. You can't make this stuff up.

Yes, it was taken during his trial and I also find it very scary to look at. A lot of the photographs give me chills. Two that strike me a lot are of survivors' testimony. The girl who walked into the Chi Omega house and spotted Bundy leaving is photographed talking about her experience, as is Carol DaRoch, who managed to flee from Bundy's car. Also chilling is the number of letters Ann has received over the years from women convinced they encountered Bundy. Ann believes some of the women are mistaken, but others are probably correct.

Finally, the very thought of Bundy sitting at a help hotline and helping save lives alongside Ann Rule...well, it's very disturbing. She was sitting with this guy late at night with no one else around and completely unaware of what he was capable of. And he actually was helping people over the telephone...imagine years later some of those callers wondering if it was him who helped them out.

The young woman who died while we were in college at Angelo State University in the late 1970s - because her killer (a BF who didn't want to be her ex-), VorGuy, and I were all in the ROTC program there and had a weekly lab together. Even though we weren't close friends...we went to some of the same social events, including soccer & softball, as I recall. Due to being married and a bit older (third year equivalent), we didn't run around socially with the first & second year students much.

But it was the first time that someone I had seen a day or two earlier had died and the first time someone that I knew had been killed. It made me wonder how much we really know about those around us, because they had been dating for a little while before she apparently decided that he was getting too serious and she wasn't ready to get married or even think about being exclusive for a while...

And it gave me cold chills to realize that a murder had been hanging around with the same places & people that I hung around with.

Finding out that she apparently haunts the building to this day...is another round of cold chills.

I'm watching on Netflix a series called "Deadly Women". I think it was originally on Discovery Channel. Some of the cases mentioned on this thread have been featured. It's a little on the cheesy side of documentaries, but not horrible.

I read an article by Anne Rule that was published in Writer's Digest many years ago, where she stated that she had felt guilty that she had never seen any evidence that Ted Bundy was the monster he turned out to be, and that he had always been very nice and polite to her and had never even come close to being threatening toward her. It was pointed out to her (I think it was by one of the detectives investigating the case) that the reason he had never seemed threatening to her was because she didn't fit his profile, since she was a divorced woman older than him who had several children, and she had no reason to feel guilty since what he did had nothing to do with her. The article was published back in the 1990s, as I recall, but I remember wondering how I'd react if someone I considered a good friend was shown to be guilty of a horrific crime. I nearly married someone who eventually went to jail for selling cocaine, and because of the timing of when he was caught there was a good chance he'd been doing it when he and I had been dating. Well, if I'd found out what he was doing I'd have turned his hide in to the police.

I read an article by Anne Rule that was published in Writer's Digest many years ago, where she stated that she had felt guilty that she had never seen any evidence that Ted Bundy was the monster he turned out to be, and that he had always been very nice and polite to her and had never even come close to being threatening toward her. It was pointed out to her (I think it was by one of the detectives investigating the case) that the reason he had never seemed threatening to her was because she didn't fit his profile, since she was a divorced woman older than him who had several children, and she had no reason to feel guilty since what he did had nothing to do with her. The article was published back in the 1990s, as I recall, but I remember wondering how I'd react if someone I considered a good friend was shown to be guilty of a horrific crime. I nearly married someone who eventually went to jail for selling cocaine, and because of the timing of when he was caught there was a good chance he'd been doing it when he and I had been dating. Well, if I'd found out what he was doing I'd have turned his hide in to the police.

Yeah, she didn't have long brunette hair parted in the middle, either!

That was interesting, because I think by the time she wrote the book, she was more at peace with her role (or non-role). She may have still carried some guilt, but she made no bones about the fact that she continued to stay in touch with him and even send cigs and munchies to his prison. I almost wondered if she hadn't had a little crush on him way back before she knew what he was.

I read an article by Anne Rule that was published in Writer's Digest many years ago, where she stated that she had felt guilty that she had never seen any evidence that Ted Bundy was the monster he turned out to be, and that he had always been very nice and polite to her and had never even come close to being threatening toward her. It was pointed out to her (I think it was by one of the detectives investigating the case) that the reason he had never seemed threatening to her was because she didn't fit his profile, since she was a divorced woman older than him who had several children, and she had no reason to feel guilty since what he did had nothing to do with her. The article was published back in the 1990s, as I recall, but I remember wondering how I'd react if someone I considered a good friend was shown to be guilty of a horrific crime. I nearly married someone who eventually went to jail for selling cocaine, and because of the timing of when he was caught there was a good chance he'd been doing it when he and I had been dating. Well, if I'd found out what he was doing I'd have turned his hide in to the police.

Yeah, she didn't have long brunette hair parted in the middle, either!

That was interesting, because I think by the time she wrote the book, she was more at peace with her role (or non-role). She may have still carried some guilt, but she made no bones about the fact that she continued to stay in touch with him and even send cigs and munchies to his prison. I almost wondered if she hadn't had a little crush on him way back before she knew what he was.

I just finished re-read her book on him, and she says she gets asked that a lot. Apparently she was in love with someone else at the time, but thought that he was a really great guy, the kind of guy she'd like to have for a son-in-law.